


Icarus, point to the sun

by sapphoslover



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Unrequited Love, Vague reference to suicidal thoughts, major character death but it's only implied, one sided jonah/barnanbas, very very vague allusions to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25993222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphoslover/pseuds/sapphoslover
Summary: Dearest Jonah,They’re wretched things— fear and longing, but I fear I don’t quite know how to live without them. I fear I don’t quite know how to live without you.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	Icarus, point to the sun

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhhh i havent relistened to tma and its been a while since i listened so sorry for any mistakes!!! title is from john my beloved bc i haven't stopped listening to it for the past 2 days. anyway i am love barnabas,

April, 1822.

_Dearest Jonah,_

_This is highly unusual, I realise. There is nothing urgent, nothing pressing, that makes me write to you, except, perhaps my own wishes. Although, I fear those won’t mean so much to you, my dear._

_I am not embittered towards you, because of that. This is a life I have chosen, and yours is a life you have chosen. I don’t begrudge you that._

_But, Jonah, there are days when I wonder if there is something else as well, other than this well of emptiness at the very bottom of my heart._

_I suppose what I am trying to say is that I miss you, you would despise me for saying that, for even thinking it, but I am nothing if not a little broken by you, Jonah._

_What do you suppose it’s like? To love someone so wholly that your whole body breathes with it? I wonder if it might feel just slightly like resignation. I have to admit I’ve known resignation too intimately to want to experience it again but for you, my Jonah, I think I might be willing._

_That was too tawdry, wasn’t it? I imagine you might have laughed at me, were you here, or call me a fool. I can’t say that is false._

_But, as I sit here, the light is dim and I think I might be slightly influenced by the alcohol, otherwise I would have to put an entirely different reason to the shaking of my hands, and Jonah, I don’t think I want to do that._

_Such a simple thing, isn’t it, the shaking of one’s hands, and the reasons behind it vast, endless. On the days the sky turns grey and stays that way I let my hands believe that their shaking comes from fear and not the terrible missing that has made a home of my body. They’re wretched things— fear and longing, but I fear I don’t quite know how to live without them. I fear I don’t quite know how to live without you._

_Your faithful servant,_

_Barnabas._

He knows he won’t send it, down to the very bottom of his bones, like second skin, he knows he won’t send it. It’s too personal, which isn’t to say that he would willingly hide anything from Jonah, he couldn’t if he wanted to. But Baranabs is nothing if not built by secrets, wedged into the crevices of his skin. He pokes at them, sometimes, prods with merciless attention and fools himself into thinking he’s doing it so that later, it’ll be easier to give it all to Jonah when he asks, if he asks, and not because he’s dreamt so long of punishing himself in a way that lasts. 

* * *

December, 1823.

_Dearest Jonah,_

_It is snowing outside my home, is it snowing wherever you are? I don’t quite know where you are, I haven’t heard from you in some time._

_I wonder if you know how snow stings when it’s unexpected, that’s how your absence stings. Which isn’t to say it was unexpected, I might be a fool but I have seen enough to know that you are not mine, that you never were._

_But even I'm allowed occasional musings to soothe whatever is left of my heart, aren’t I? If I am to pay a price for my sins, I suppose this is it, sitting alone in front of a fire thinking of you._

_You, Jonah, are you my penance? I’ll accept that with open palms, as you know, bloody or not, though I suppose you’d fancy a bit of blood. You always did. And I am no one to deny you._

_Is that love? It seems too violent to be love but I must admit I wouldn’t know much about it, either way._

_I do know violence, I suppose, in the way that my heart beats only to the thought of you, these days, in the way that my lungs don’t seem to breathe until your face paints itself behind my eyelids._

_What have you done to me, Jonah? What did I let you do to me?_

_Your faithful servant,_

_Barnabas._

If Barnabas notices petals stuck to the roof of his mouth the next morning, stubborn as memory, as the first rains after a drought, as the drought itself, he pays them no mind.

It doesn’t do any good, he thinks, only skirting the edges of unbecoming, to dwell on things that have imprinted themselves on the inside of his wrist, permanent as his heartbeat. 

* * *

January, 1824.

_Dearest Jonah,_

_If there is a God, or simply a higher power, I pray to it that everything I have ever written for you never reaches you. It’s a desperate, desperate, attempt from a half-dying man._

_I will not send these to you, Jonah, but I know you— in so much as I am capable of knowing you, in so much as anyone is capable of knowing you, I know you. I know if you wish to find out more after I die, you will do everything in your power to make sure nothing I own is left untouched. Is this a plea? I’m afraid I’m not quite sure._

_It never bodes well to plead to you, I know that, I implored you to stay, all those months ago, perhaps years, my memory isn’t what it used to be. Not that it ever was much, but everything looks the same these days, Jonah, as if painted in a film of white and I wonder if that means an end or a beginning._

_I do not fear death, not in the way you do. Which isn’t to say you fear it but I know you enough to know that if you could cheat it, you would. Maybe you can, I wouldn’t know._

_I don’t suppose I’d want to cheat it, I’ve waited for it too long to want to escape its embrace but if I could wish for one more thing besides you Jonah, I’d wish for more time. Not excessively so, but slightly more._

_I don’t know what it is, but there’s a feeling at the bottom of my caged lungs that I’m going to see you again, that I’m going to see you again and this time you’ll be something close to invincible, something unbeatable and fierce running through your veins and I don’t want to miss it._

_It’s not the flowers that scare me, not entirely, I’ve always known I’d die of a broken heart, mouth filled to the roof with marigolds and single daffodil and lungs that would paint whatever home I have, red._

_The first time I saw you, I knew the cause of the flowers would be you. I will never regret that. I’ve loved you too much, too wholly, too unsparingly to regret that. I’ve clung to whatever of you lives in my mind with torn fingernails and if I come to regret that, well that would be quite unbecoming of me._

_I’m not quite sure what I want to say, words, like my memory seem to slip over me like ice nowadays. Everything blurs into a shapeless form, sometimes a malevolent creature, sometimes you, at night and I have come to realise that it’s not the missing that will break me. It will be something simple, something purely of my own making, something easily avoidable, but I won’t— avoid it, that is. Whether that is because of something hollow wedges at the bottom of my undead heart or just the simple need to ruin what should have ceased to exist a long time ago— I do not know._

_But while you are the cause of my disease, I am afraid you won’t be the cause of my demise. Not entirely, not in the way you would have wanted, if you would have been given a choice._

_I wonder what that says about you, dearest, or what it says about me._

_Even so, while I am still capable of it, I wish for a little more time._

_Your faithful servant,_

_Barnabas._

He folds the paper and tucks it inside his drawer, neatly lined with others similar to this one. His hands are stained blue and he wonders if it is the ink or just his loneliness seeping out of his veins like something unholy. 

* * *

February, 1824.

_Dearest Jonah,_

_These are getting quite frequent aren’t they? I pray to whatever God there is or isn’t that you never find them. It is a simple, selfish thought, Jonah, a last fleeting, desperate attempt at something akin to preserving whatever is left of my dignity._

_There never was much, anyway, not since I met you and you took me apart with hands that were never gentle yet I believed them to be._

_I could never believe the worst of you, not even when you so desperately wanted me to. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t._

_You weren’t the first person, Jonah. You don’t know that. I never told you, and you never asked. But you weren’t the first. Not the first to touch me, not the first to see me, and not the first to ask me to believe the worst of them._

_I should have known better, perhaps, but in hindsight everything looks paler, somehow. As if I’m looking at it all through a lens that’s jagged and broken. I do not quite know what to make of it. I miss you, Jonah, there’s no other way to say it, no other way to describe it. I go to sleep thinking of your voice, I fear I’m forgetting it. I promised myself I never would forget you, not you, but you know how memory deceives me, how it always has._

_I can never quite trust my own mind, Jonah. I think you knew that, I think that worked well to your advantage. I don’t mind, my dearest. I’d let you do anything to me if it meant I’d get to see your face, feel your skin on mine again. I don’t know what it’s like to truly be alive on the days you are not with me. Forgive me for being so melancholy, Jonah. I fear old age is taking a toll on me._

_Do you know, Jonah? Has Mordehcai told you? He saw me, as you might know, not very long ago. I suppose I didn’t hide it as well as I should have, I am simply too tired for pretenses now, which is very unbecoming of me. But, needs must._

_In the quiet of this house, Jonah, I am deeply alone and I can admit to myself that the flowers growing inside my lungs and sticking to my tongue like dead words I never said to you are the most beautiful things ever._

_You’d call me a fool, you’d call me a lovesick, miserable fool, Jonah I know you will and I won’t say you’re wrong but Jonah, I am not miserable because I am in love with you. Misery takes a step back when I think of you, Jonah, you are a cause of fear for the best of them, my love. I don’t suppose I have the privilege to call you that but allow me my one misgiving, my beloved._

_That’s all I ask for you, if life permits, I shall never ask anything of you ever again._

_Your faithful servant,_

_Barnabas._

Sometimes, there are moments before a disaster that seem covered in a sheen of grieving velvet. On one late afternoon, with the pavement outside covered in rain Barnabas felt the impending sense of doom down to his very bones. He shivered, slightly and it wasn’t from the cold. He had always trusted his deepest instincts even though he had never listened to them. He knew, certain as the thunder outside, that something was going to happen. Something big and perhaps, beautiful. 

When he coughed, lungs collapsing around the flowers growing within them, his palm became covered with a sheen of daffodil petals. It wasn’t anything new, but he could feel the press of something, cold as thorn on the ridges of his heart, something urgent. Restless, he grew restless, hands fidgeting with the pen. The paper he was writing on grew wet and when he touched a bloodied palm to his cheek it came away pressed with tears, entwined with his own blood. It was poetic in the worst of ways and he found himself laughing, hoarse and rough, scratching his throat on the way out, as if etched with gravel and it _hurt._ A hurt that was always welcome. Distantly, distantly, almost foolishly, he thought that the blood and tears in his palm spelt the word _Jonah._

* * *

March, 1824.

_Something’s happened, Jonah. Something’s happened. I don’t know what else to say. It seems as if I won’t see you before I die, but I know, at the bottom of my shrivelled heart that my end does not mean the end of us. Call it intuition, call it the musings of a dying man._

_My love for you does not know time, Jonah._

_Your faithful servant,_ _  
_ _Barnabas Bennett._

___

That was the second to last letter he wrote Jonah. The last letter he wrote him, he sent it. Out of desperation, perhaps, but mostly the need to tell Jonah that it would be the last he ever heard from him, a fleeting moment of gratuitous hope he couldn’t bring himself to regret. What use does regret have for a man on the door of death? 

* * *

April, 1824. 

“Well?” Mordehcai says, his face serene as it had been the first time Barnabas had seen him. Barnabas envied him then, the way he could stay still even in the middle of a raging storm, the way his stillness tethered him. Barnabas doesn’t envy him now, it’s hard to envy someone at the brink of death, with one’s own blood on their palms, under their fingernails, room covered in flower petals, evidence of their disease everywhere. He hadn’t bothered to even try to hide it from Mordechai, knew that Mordechai would have guessed at it the last time he saw him. 

“I’m ready.” He says, folds his bloodied handkerchief and tucks it in the pocket of his coat. 

Mordechai raises an eyebrow, a movement so extremely subtle, Barnabas is surprised he caught it. His hands itch to trace the curve of Mordechai’s eyebrow, just to see if it’s real. When the light lands on Mordechai’s face just so, Barnabas sees the roar of the ocean in his eyes, just for a second, before they seem empty again. 

He looks around his house again, it seems a disservice to Jonah to call this place a home and yet, there is something akin to _missing_ in the hollow of his chest. He fears it shows on his face, with the way Mordechai’s lips twist into a semblance of sorrow for just a second, swift and sharp. He doesn’t say anything. Barnabas is grateful for it. Small mercies, he thinks, quietly in the small space of his mind that has somehow remained untouched by all this grief. _Small mercies,_ he thinks and tastes the grief at the back of his tongue. He isn’t surprised when it tastes of Jonah. 

“Alright. We can go.” He says. Mordechai nods. 

Outside, rain falls. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!!!!


End file.
